CPI struggles to tackle its growing irrelevance

When the national executive of the Communist Party of India (CPI) met in Delhi's Ajoy Bhavan on May 9, there were predictable disagreements among the comrades on various issues.

Is the BJP-led Government a precursor to a fascist India? Or is it a mere passing show? Can alliances with bourgeois democratic parties work? Are tactical alliances with the Congress desirable? The doctrinal hair-splitting and voluble invocations from the collected works of Lenin, however, barely concealed the one point of unanimity: that the party has seen better days.

It is not merely the collapse of the socialist fatherland and the all-round retreat of ideology that worries the CPI. The party of S.A. Dange, Ajoy Ghosh, Bhupesh Gupta and Hiren Mukherjee is confronted with a more mundane concern: electoral irrelevance.

In 1952 and 1957, the CPI was the main opposition party in the Lok Sabha with 16 and 27 seats, and a vote tally of 3.3 percent and 8.9 percent respectively. In 1971, when it was in alliance with the Congress, it won 23 seats and 4.7 percent of votes.

Harkishen Singh Surjeet with A.B.Bardhan: cautious moves

In the 12th Lok Sabha, the CPI is down to nine seats and 1.6 percent of the popular vote. Whereas the party used to win seats from working-class-dominated constituencies such as Indore, Mumbai, Kanpur and Patna, it now survives only on the strength of its piggybacking abilities.

Today, there is no Lok Sabha seat where the CPI can actually win on its own. It is either dependant on the CPI(M), which outpaced it as India's premier communist party in 1977, or other constituents of the United Front. Where alliances fail, as they did in Bihar, the CPI is automatically reduced to zero. To make matters worse, this general election the CPI came precariously close to losing its status as a national party.

With the ground slipping rapidly from under its feet, the CPI's salvage operation has fallen back on another mantra from the past: left unity. The National Executive devoted its energies to formulating its approach to the vexed question of unity between the two communist parties. The issue will be fine-tuned at the two-day National Council meeting in June and given a final shape by the party Congress in Chennai between September 14 and 19.

The CPI has put aside both history and ego to try and entice the CPI(M) in a rescue plan. With the "fascist" BJP on the ascendant, the CPI is trying to draw lessons from the mistakes committed by the German communists in the 1930s when sectarian differences prevented a united front against Hitler. India, admit CPI leaders, is far from being in a state of revolutionary fervour.

It is haunted by a spectre of communalism that could lead to fascism. "The CPI(M) cannot claim to have established a hegemony of the working classes nor have we achieved our aim of national democracy," says D. Raja, National Council member.

"The CPI believes that only a united left can take on the BJP."

To cope with this right-wing challenge, the CPI favours abandoning doctrinal differences and forging the unity of "secular and democratic forces", beginning with the unity of the two communist parties. Says CPI General Secretary A.B. Bardhan: "It is absolutely essential that the two parties join hands. Only a united left can take on the BJP."

Tragically for Bardhan, the CPI(M) does not view left unity with the same degree of enthusiasm. Apart from the fact that the CPI(M) is ideologically more rigid than the CPI, there remains a great deal of bitterness at the grassroots level over the pro-Congress stand taken by the CPI during the Emergency.

Faced with the CPI's overtures, the CPI(M) has responded by first suggesting the unity of the front organisations. The two rival Kisan Sabhas and the two trade union organisations - AITUC, which is linked to the CPI, and CITU, attached to the CPI(M) - have passed resolutions calling for a merger.

On the question of undoing the split of 1964, however, the CPI(M) favours extreme caution. "That is not on our agenda for the moment," says CPI(M) General Secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet. Having carefully nurtured its organisation through the difficult '60s and '70s, the CPI(M) is loath to compromise its ideological purity for the sake of those who, until yesterday, were spiritedly denounced as "right revisionists".

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